Those Who Fight Monsters: Tales of Occult Detectives

by Gustainis, Justin

  When another hunter calls, you go. It’s that simple. We who hold back the tide of Hell don’t ask for help lightly. I had irons in the fire back home, but Slade had called. A short message— Trouble brewing. Something big. Need backup. And I was on a plane and out of my town before the sun rose, ending up in his territory over a thousand miles away. Where the skies were always gray and there was a coffee shop on every single corner. The whole city smelled like concrete and old, moldy java.

  I didn’t have a chance to ask why he’d called me, since he’d disappeared before I could get here.

  We’d done hunter residencies together in New Orleans with Katja Lefevre, and that had been one sliptilting screamfest after another. I still had scars twitching from those six months. But you don’t ask questions. A hunter won’t call another away from her territory without a damn good reason.

  His house on its quiet tree-lined street was empty, the front door smashed to flinders and Slade himself gone. The local Weres, Slade’s backup, knew nothing. The hellbreed weren’t opening their mouths much. All I had was a name — Narcisa. And another one: the Dutch.

  I didn’t know what Narcisa meant. But the Dutch was a hellbreed club downtown, near the open air market where they threw fish around during the day.

  I was glad to miss that. I mean, come on. Flinging fish?

  The skyline here was alien territory. Santa Luz is desert, but Slade’s city lives under a perpetual gray drizzle. You wouldn’t think it would make much difference to a nocturnal creature. Dark is dark, and it gets cold in the desert too.

  I crouched on the rooftop, dripping hair, dripping from my nose and fingertips, my leather trench shedding water thanks to the waterproofing. Weather means very little to a full-fledged hunter, but the chill in this place reached right into my bones.

  It wasn’t physical.

  Across the street, the neon sign for the Dutch — a flying ship, of all things, with both oars and sail, lovingly rendered in glowing tubes — cast sickly green and red glow down into the wet street. Music pulsed in bass-thumping ribbons inside, the double doors flung wide in invitation. There was a line going down the block, but nobody seemed to have umbrellas. Just standing there in the wet.

  No Traders in the line — they walked right in past the Trader bouncers. No visible hellbreed, but they would be inside.

  They usually are. Ready and waiting, like spiders in a web.

  Back in Santa Luz it was an hour ahead but a world away. Dark falls quickly out in the desert, like a guillotine blade. I would have hit the streets as dusk did, and probably already been in one or two short sharp fights. Since Mikhail was dead, plenty of them thought I’d be easy to get past or roll over.

  Don’t think about that, Jill. Focus.

  I eased my weight back and forth, watching. A hunter learns early to draw a cloak of silence over the waiting, an uncanny stillness. Within that circle of quiet, though, you have to move a little bit. Shifting and adjusting to keep the muscles primed for action.

  And as usual while I was waiting, the memories came back. My teacher’s final gurgle as the scarlet gush of his life left him, his body stiffening then slumping in my arms, becoming deadweight. The bitch who killed him was gone, good luck finding her now. And here I was a thousand miles from my city on a wild goose chase, and God only knew what was going on at home —

  Stop. Intuition tingled. Look, Jill. Something’s there.

  Indeed, something was. A long glossy-black limousine pulled up to the curb, and the bouncers tensed. A Trader — blond, male, long legs, in a sharp dark suit — strolled out of the club’s wide-flung mahogany doors.

  The scar puckered, a hurtful throb. The mark of a hellbreed’s lips against the tender inner flesh of my right wrist tasted the predatory glee on the air.

  I was harder to kill now. Much harder.

  Was it worth the price I’d paid? Especially since I hadn’t been fast enough or strong enough when it counted.

  Stop it. Look at what’s happening.

  Premonition tingled along every inch of me. A hunter becomes a full-blown psychic before long. Sorcery will do that for you.

  And when you spend your life dealing with the nightside it’s more of a survival mechanism than a perk.

  So I kept still, blinking the rain out of my eyes. Watched the Trader open the limo’s door, watched the long lean white leg slide out of the interior and the black stiletto heel touch wet cement. She rose out of the back of the car like a bad dream, dead-white curves poured into something slinky-black and sequined, slit up the sides. A mass of tumbled jet-black curls, and even at this distance the set of the slim shoulders was wrong.

  A hunter can see below the carapace of beauty they wear. We can see the twisting in them.

  This was a full hellbreed, waltzing in the front door. And if the Trader bowed and scraped any more, he would be licking the sidewalk.

  It had to be the mysterious Narcisa.

  A glitter caught my eye. There, around her wasp-waist, a belt of threads and jingling silver, the surface of the metal flowing with blue light, not quite popping free as sparks. I let out a soundless sigh. It’s just like an arrogant fuck of a hellbreed to flout and taunt with a substance they’re deadly-allergic to. If the silver rubbed her skin it would leave a bubbling, blistering burn.

  They were charms. The same kind of charms as those tied into my hair with red thread. They didn’t jingle as I moved again, my tented fingers against the lip-roof, bootsoles gripping. Steel-toed and steel-heeled, but flexible enough to grab under the ball of the foot, and silent as I touched the wet roughness of rooftop and cursed inwardly.

  Now why would you be wearing those, bitch?

  I had an idea, and it wasn’t a nice one. So I reached for the copper cuff covering the scar. As soon as I stripped it off, my sensory acuity jacked up into the red and the flashing diamonds of small raindrops hit like an army’s feet drumming.

  My legs straightened. If any of those charms were Slade’s, another hunter showing up might spook her. And if I went in guns blazin’, the way I prefer to, she had a better chance at getting away in the resultant chaos.

  So, I would have to be sneaky.

  Moments later, the rooftop was empty.

  The Trader sat in the driver’s seat, window open and a cigarette fuming in the chill air. The alley enclosed the limo, wet trash drifted in the corners. The Dutch’s back entrance — or one of them, I would bet there were more — didn’t look like anything special. Just an alley.

  Except for the rain, it could have been a corner of my city. They don’t all look the same. But they’re a crowd. You have to cut them out, take them one by one, before you can tell them apart.

  I weighed my options. I could wait all night, but if she was wearing Slade’s charms, I might not have that long.

  He could be dead already, Jill.

  The machine in my head, the one trained into me from the very beginning, clicked away. For me the machine’s birth was in the instant Mikhail plucked me from that snowbank, the .22 vanishing into his pocket. Not tonight, little one, he’d said. I’d decided that very moment, calculating my chances of being good enough for him.

  Except at the end, I hadn’t been.

  I tensed. But the Trader below just flicked his ash. That’s how I could tell it was a he — the shape of the hand, the blunt fingers. He wasn’t smoking much, just lighting cigarette after cigarette and letting it burn. If it was a superstition, it was an odd one. If, however, it was a nervous tic, then he had reason to be nervous. Squiring around a hellbreed who had hunter charms jingling on her belt.

  The machine inside my head was still jotting up percentages. What were the chances that Slade was still alive? They got smaller every minute I sat here and waited. If the ‘breed thought she was being followed, this stop could be a decoy, but my intuition was tingling so hard I was almost jittery. Like too much coffee from the stands on every corner, jolts going through me. Training clamped down on my nervous system, damping the fl
ood of adrenaline and the nervousness.

  It might be too late to save Slade. But it wouldn’t be too late to avenge him.

  Avenging isn’t good enough. You know that.

  I leaned forward a little, cold water threading its fingers through my hair and kissing the metal of the charms. Kept still and silent, waiting. Just a few minutes more.

  You don’t stay — or even become — a hunter without knowing when to buck those percentages. Something told me Slade was still alive. And maybe hoping I’d come get him. If there was enough of him left to hope.

  The limo’s engine roused, softly. I tensed, muscle by muscle, heartrate picking up just a little.

  Keep your pulse down, milaya. Mikhail’s voice. A fresh jab of pain, spurring me toward action. Quiet and quick, little snake under rock. But not with thunder following you around.

  My heart hurt. But when the slice of door appeared in the back of the club and the hellbreed stepped out, silver twinkling around her seashell hips and a black umbrella opening like a poisonous flower over her carefully-mussed curls, I moved without hesitation. I hung in midair for a bare moment, etheric energy burning in a sphere and rain flashing crystalline all around me, before the drop swallowed me and there was no more time for brooding.

  Even if your heart is breaking, you’ve got to get the job done.

  I didn’t feel too good about dragging the hellbreed into Slade’s house by her curling black hair, but I didn’t have any other place that would serve. She splashed black ichor and rainwater over the worn blue carpet in his front hall. By the time I had her tied in a high chair from the breakfast bar separating the dining room from the kitchen, my left arm was aching high-up from where the humerus had snapped and there was a trail of guck from the battered-in front door to the dining room.

  Slade apparently practiced in here, it was hardwood and weapons hung on the wall, not a table in sight. But then, I didn’t have a dining-room table either. Cooking was a low priority. I poured down takeout and liquid courage when I remembered to. Or when my body insisted point-blank.

  I tested the silver-coated handcuffs again. Secure. I had extra handcuffs, around her matchstick ankles. Slade had some blessed silver-threaded rope hanging up in neat loops near his AK-47 and a rapier on the wall, and I’d hooked it down while I dragged the bitch in. I took my time tying her up — elbows, knees, everything. She was trying to chew through the gag.

  It’s not every day you kidnap a ‘breed. I wanted no mistakes.

  I stepped back, looked at my work. More blood on my face, drying on my torn T-shirt, one leg of my leather pants shredded and flopping and soaked with more blood.

  Killing her would have been cleaner than what I was about to do. Disgust bit in under my breastbone, hot and acid. I swallowed it.

  Once in New Orleans I’d been up against a mass of Traders, working the disappearance of a teenage girl. Dropped right into a snake’s nest. The scar on my arm was still fresh, I was new to the jacked-up sensory acuity and power it provided, and I’d had my doubts about the whole damn thing, including my survival. Then Slade kicked the door in and from there it was nothing but work. The same kind of work it is every night, for every hunter in the world.

  I’d thanked him, but he shrugged it off. For Slade, not looking for me just wasn’t an option. Not diving into the fight, where we were outnumbered twelve to one, wasn’t an option.

  I will hold you the line, milaya. Mikhail’s voice, again. The first time I ever went between, the decent into Hell that makes a hunter what he or she is. The thing that strips away the shell so we can see the twisting. I stay right here, and I hold you the line.

  I pushed the thought away. Pulled out my second-biggest knife, and the hellbreed stilled. Her eyes were black. No iris, no white, just black from lid to lid. Like tar, swallowing a struggling animal whole.

  I lifted the knife a little, and those black eyes widened. But behind the fear — it was just a screen, really — was the calculation. The cold ratlike look. How can I make this work for me? What do I do to get out of this?

  “Slade,” I said. “Hunter. Taller than me, black hair, silver charms.” I let my eyes drop to her waist, where the black dress hadn’t torn and the charms glinted. One flour-pale breast sagged out of the tight top, and sequins dripped when she heaved against the ropes. Her pale leg tensed, slipping out from under the torn skirt like a waxen maggot. “You have one chance.” I sounded flat, tired. Almost bored. My blue eye was hot, watching the space around her for any shimmer of bad intent. “After that, I start cutting.”

  The last thing I did was cut the silver charms away and stuff them, jangling and spitting with blue sparks, into one of my pockets. The hellbreed’s body, what was left of it, slumped, held up only by the ropes, corruption racing through its tissues.

  They rot fast, when they go. Bile fought for release in the back of my throat. What I’d just done was in no way clean combat. I swallowed hard, telling myself that at least I’d granted her a quick death once I knew she had no more to tell me.

  Her victims hadn’t gotten the same deal. Oh no. They never do.

  It was faint comfort. The kind that wasn’t really comfort at all. I looked around at Slade’s weaponry and took what I needed. That’s one thing about a hunter’s house — the weaponry is always logically arranged.

  Outside, the rain had turned into a persistent curtain of sleet. How did people live here? Jesus. But it did wash the stink of fear and hellbreed ichor off me.

  By the time I reached the Dutch again, faint pearly light was staining the eastern horizon. Dawn would come reluctantly, peering through a thick veil of gray cloud. Urgency beat behind my breastbone, but I had no car and no way to get one. No time to stop to call for Were backup — and Weres don’t go up against hellbreed, anyway. They aren’t built for it.

  No time even to meet up with Slade’s police liaison. What could they do, the cops? Other than get killed going in where I was about to.

  Near dawn, and the line at the door hadn’t gone down. It would have been depressing, if I hadn’t been moving too fast for it to matter.

  I streaked across the street like a missile, using every erg of inhuman speed I possessed. Took the first bouncer with a short upward strike, bone breaking and the nasal promontory driven into the brain. Even though most Traders go for bizarre body mods married to a scrim of hellish beauty, the underlying anatomy is basically the same as the rest of us.

  Underneath, we can’t get away from what we are.

  I had the second one down and shot twice before the screaming started and the Trader who had minced out to open Narcisa’s limo door burst through the doorway. He looked surprised, didn’t even have time to snarl before the whip cracked across his face and I filled him with silverjacket lead. He dropped like a poleaxed steer; I stretched out in a leap across his body and darted through the open doors.

  Each hellbreed hole is slightly different. The breed-only ones are mostly underground, the maggots hiding from the sun. The mixed Trader-and-breed ones are usually run by a mover and shaker in the local breed community, and decorated according to that breed’s particular obsessions. I don’t know if “obsessions” is the right word. There’s a ‘breed in my city who has her place filled with stuffed cats of every size and description — actual taxidermist-stuffed corpses of felines.

  This particular hole was painted, velvet-swathed, and curlicued like a baroque French bordello. Crimson and glaring yellow, the dance floor white and black squares like a chessboard. The bar was a huge twisted thing of metal and old dark-stained oak, bottles ranked glowing behind it against a mirrored wall.

  And it was crawling with Traders. Not too many full ‘breed. The beautiful damned were startled, gem-bright eyes opening wide and dark velvet mouths opening. Moving fast, boots thudding the floor, I shot a Trader between the eyes as he snarled at me, and cut a path straight for the iron door set near the back.

  There’s always a door, and it’s always made of that dark, dark iron. T
here’s always a red velvet rope in front of it, like it’s some sort of VIP lounge, but there’s never a line. Two guards, dumb slabs of muscle with submachine guns. I was on them before the one on the right could even raise his, killed him first, took the one on the left with a leaping dropkick, knocking the barrel aside so he sprayed the oncoming Traders with hot lead. That worked so nicely I put him down hard and grabbed the submachine gun, recoil jolting all the way up my arms as I fired controlled, two-shot bursts into the crowd of Traders. Kicked the door, the scar chuckling on my wrist as barbwire heat poured up my arm, swept down my chest. The iron made a hollow boom and sagged, I kicked it again and I slid in crabwise, still shooting until the gun ran out of ammo. I chucked it at one of the Traders, it clocked him right on the forehead with a sound that would have been funny if it had been in another situation.

  Wow, these things do a lot of damage. Won’t help with the breed, though. Speed it up, Jill.

  The long hall stretched in front of me. Doors on either side, each as anonymous as the next. But thanks to Narcisa, I knew which one I was aiming for.

  The one at the end.

  The one standing ajar, slowly opening as I pelted down the hall, whip jangling and right hand flashing down to my belt, grabbing what I wanted with a swift jerk and snapping it away.

  Everything now depended on speed.

  I hit the slowly-opening door going full throttle, it snapped away from the hinges and I rode it like a surfboard, my boots gripping its surface. The shock of landing was broken by something kind-of-soft; I still used it to push off and landed on the table. It was a long dinner-affair with wrought-iron candelabra at even intervals, I kicked one off as I pounded down the table. Hellbreed scattered — the movers and shakers of the local community, gathered here to carve up a helpless city like a big fat roast.

  Narcisa had told me enough to guess what they were aiming at. With the city’s hunter out of commission, they would have free rein until another hunter could be found. We are so few.

  At the far end, something white hung from the ceiling, a shape against the black wall. Two arms, stretched up and clasped in leather cuffs, and a pale body topped with a shock of black hair. Stripes of blood, dried and fresh, marred the paleness. Bruises glared.